What I've Been Up To

I've been a really bad blogger.  I don't want to be one of those bloggers who hardly ever blogs, but for some reason the month of December was so busy that I hardly blogged anything.  I had quite a bit of time off from work since the college campus where I work closes down every year for a couple of weeks at Christmas.  Then, right after that we got snow and had some more days off.  Last weekend we had about 9 inches and that pretty much shut the whole city down for about 2 days.  We just don't have the equipment to handle it all since we hardly ever have snow.  We've been getting it the last couple of years, though, and it's been nice.  We do get cabin fever, though, and even though I had to come back to work yesterday and today, it was nice to get out of the house. This morning as I was parking, I saw the prettiest site. A blanket of snow in my headlights and it looked like there were little twinkling stars on top of the snow. I tried to capture it with my camera, but I don't know if you can really see it.

Over the month of December I worked on several crafty projects.  I don't have pictures of them all here, but I do have a few pictures of some pillows I made.  I posted earlier about the crochet pillows I made, but then I decided to make a couple of yo-yo pillows.  I saw some pictures on other blogs that gave me inspiration and this is what I came up with.

I really enjoyed making all of these pillows.  The yo-yo's were fun.  It helped that I had a bunch of yo-yo's already made.  All I had to do was sew them together.  The top yo-yo pillow is one that I bought at Target on sale for about $5.00 and then sewed the yo-yo's to it.  I figured that by the time I went and bought the fabric, fiberfill, etc., that I would have spent more than that, so I just bought the ready made pillow.  I did sew the rectangular shaped pillow.  I saw one similar to it in blogland and I just had to have one, so I made this one and it came out really well.  I love it.

When I got back to work this week I had a really nice surpise waiting for me.  One of my coworkers had mentioned that he and his wife had been traveling Tennessee on the route for Tennessee Quilt Barns.  That is, barns in Tennessee that have a wooden quilt block on them.  He is a photographer and he decided to take pictures of some of them and make a calendar from it.  Here is the result:

I asked him if he would forward the website where he made his calendar because I thought that maybe it would be nice to use some of the photos I've made with my new DSLR camera to make a calendar and give them as Christmas gifts this year.

Talking about not blogging much in December reminds me of what I want to work on this year. We always talk about making resolutions and I really hate to say I'm making resolutions because I almost never keep them. So, I would prefer to say that there are several things I want to work on this year. That just seems more doable to me. One of the things I really want to work on is spending more time in Bible study. I love doing Bible studies and I enjoy reading the Bible, but somehow this always gets put on the back burner because of other things I put before it. So, this year I really want to work on doing more Bible studies. I'm really interested in the women in the Bible. I just finished a small study about the book of Ruth. While doing that study, I read about another woman in the Bible I want to read about and that's Tamar. Then I also want to study Esther and Dorcas. There is not much in the Bible about Dorcas, just a few chapters, but her life seems so profound to me that I'm disappointed that not much more was written about her. In fact, her story is so short in the Bible that I think I'll post it right here:

Acts 9:36-42 (New International Version)

36 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor. 37 About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. 38 Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!”

39 Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

40 Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. 41 He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. 42 This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord.

It just seems to me that her story is so important for us today that I'm really disappointed that so little was written about her. But then, I don't have a Bible concordance, so I'm going to look her up in one and see what else has been written. For some reason, I feel led to write a Bible study about her life, but with so little in the Bible about her, I don't know how I'm going to do that. With the Lord's help, hopefully I'll figure it out.

Well, that's it for now.  I will try to be more diligent in writing this year.